"I WANT TO HELP MY FAMILY". That is how passionate Kelvin Doe is about the well-being his own people. Then again, young people are generally known to harbor deep feelings of unconditional love for their next-of-kin. That, obviously, makes this brilliant star from self-robbed Sierra Leone no exception. He is only fifteen-years of age. Already filling the shoes of an adult breadwinner, he wishes to see his disadvantaged family through a better day. 

Too bad Charles Taylor and his cronies did not envision the future unraveling the way it is. This is undeniably true all over Africa. 

Decades of senseless combat in the West Africa region left behind it a shadow of hopelessness that is almost without remedy. And families were left to fend for themselves, and without any reasonable means to do so. As a result, many children--toddlers and young boys and girls--will never know how nice and empowering it is to be able to read, write, and cipher. And Africa and the world will never know how poorer the human experience is, owing to this fact. Geoffrey Robertson, QC, has a name for it in his punchy book CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.     

And now, enter good spirits like Kelvin Doe. These young people, around this great continent which they call home, are growing up to manufacture something new from their untenable past, with their own hands, from absolutely nothing, and help enrich the life in the African region. Humanity is highly indebted to them.

Older generations like to brag about their status as freedom fighters. They always like to be idolized and  paid a life-time pension amounting to perpetuity. Yet they cannot admit to the indictment that they have, and are in the process of, stealing from the future of the continent. They won't own up to that. Well, they have the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, don't they?

Kelvin is growing up to be a good family man, a considerate neighbor, an excellent inventor, and a rare breed of entrepreneurs.

Known as DJ Focus to his community of Freetown, Sierra Leone, he started his own radio station, using discarded materials he was lucky enough to find lying around his neighborhood. Now He plays music and "narrowcasts" news bulletins for his fortunate community. Because of the erratic power supply in his country, this self-taught engineer skillfully put together a generator to supply electricity around town. How resourceful!

He's gotten an invite from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He addressed undergraduate engineering students at Harvard College with panache, too. It seems no task is too daunting for this amazing autodidact. Doe boasts a $100,000 energy project as well.    

The scourge of unnecessary brain-drain is preventable. Valuable skilled people are leaving places of their origin in droves for better opportunities else where because back home push factors are unbearable. The situation is reminiscent of the great trek of the mid-nineteenth century in South Africa. Only this time the trek goes beyond borders, never to be reversed. Sad think is, no one seems to be touched. Not even business people.

Should this future not be the one more deserving of investment from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and other such organizations? Is this not the future Africans would not like to call their own? Does it not make more sense to sponsor these initiatives so that employment opportunities are encouraged, and living standards are raised? Perhaps Dr. Mo Ibrahim should rethink his investment strategy for the Africa he aspires to. Maybe we all need to reconsider our collective goals and dreams. 

 

Go watch the video on YouTube. It's titled "15-year-old Kelvin Doe wows M.I.T."          

   

THE UNITED NATIONS IS MISTAKEN. The world is wrong by following the UN's directives and suggestions. If the way humans experience their habitat is to be made better, meaningful, and a proud legacy to leave behind, then humanity needs to raise to the elevated occasion. The problem isn't much about development and the required rate as it is about clinging to ancient traditions in the name of ethnic identity, even to the point of committing crimes against humanity.

The occasion is piled up higher than the highest peak on earth--Mt Everest. And this point has been reached time and again, although with hazardous threats. But we have not even begun trying to scale man-made walls that divide us; huddles that stubbornly block our paths; are not about to harness and mass-produce tools of this demanding age.

With the advent of the new millennium, inherent difficulties abounded. These projections dictated new ways of going about our respective businesses in making a contribution to the HUMAN PROJECT. The German theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein, rightfully taught that confronted with hard problems and the very future of the world hung in the balance, all attempts at solving the problems would be futile if all we did was rearrange old methods of intellectual resources. The more promising activity would be to beat a new path, "a new and a higher level of thinking". To that, I might add a new and a higher level of acting, of believing, of looking at things.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) do nothing of the sort. A product of UN Millennium Declaration held in 2000, these goals are legendarily far off their intended mark. Reason being that they are predicated on too simple a sociological paradigm. Nations aren't undeveloped because they are lacking a comprehensive program of progress for new challenges. Rather, underdevelopment results squarely from nostalgic tendencies and blind homage we pay to our rural ancestors, and the attendant misplaced diagnosis. These bygone generations were themselves faced with hardships which they fell short to neutralize. Hence they procrastinated, and eventually exited the world's stage. We, the now living, were left on the same plane of ambivalence, yet the ground has shifted from under our inexperienced feet. 

The MDGs only entrench what hindrances already exist in the world. And this theme runs through all eight of them. I am sure the MDGs were meant for some measure of good in the way we live and interact. After all, one nation cannot perish without diminishing the entire system of the standards of living--"I am because you are, for we can only be human together".

The program of the MDGs will cover unnoticeable foreground, if at all. It is no solution to age-old intricacies of man's comings and goings. Blaise Pascal embodied the spirit of the MDGs along way before their time when he said, "man's problems stem from his inability to sit still". What Pascal meant effectively, was that, every things will change, but man must disregard what change he noticed around him. Man's activities should amount to inactivity--him competitive advantage. If he did that, man would lead a fulfilling, non-destructive, and meaningful life.

On the other side of this philosophical coin, the exact opposite is stubbornly true. That, if man stays put, and uses not what is generously available to him, he whole meaning of his existence will let him be. The evidence exists in liberal quantities: civilization of man does not stop. His competitive advantage should be, and he needs must awake to this fact, to never sit still, never to back down, and always seek to advance with the momentum of the change he knows is out there in the world.
              

THE ANALYSIS OF THE MDGs IN TURNS:

1. ERADICATE EXTREME POVERTY AND HUNGER. Effectively, promote higher standards of living by championing industrialization of world's economies. What if the same UN prohibits countries from achieving goal #1 by imposing CO2 emissions targets? Will the living standards still elevate?
2. ACHIEVE UNIVERSAL PRIMARY EDUCATION. Meaning, do not stress about the quality of the education your children are receiving, be grateful they are receiving it at all. Also, don't gauge the education about its effectiveness of its power to solve problems in your economy. These things are not easy, you know. Just accept the inevitable. You will be fine, the whole lot of you.
3. PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY AND EMPOWER WOMEN. UN: Ethnic differences are for the birds. You will do well disrespecting your elders. Womenfolk should not be treated the way your forefathers prescribed. If you do not understand that, you are sick in your head. Tell each one of your own wicked people. LOCALS: women are but just women. They won't tell men what is to be done. What do they know about government, anyway? That's for us men to worry about. Remember, this is a men's world, and men say women belong in the kitchen. 
4. REDUCE CHILD MORTALITY. UN: Life expectance at birth should be improved so that children could grow up like every human being. To achieve this goal, western medicines will be supplied, at some cost of course. LOCALS: Our forefathers used indigenous herbs and spices, and they were strong and healthy. No children died. They live to be hundred years and more. That is what we want for our children. You can shove your medicines up ...  
5. IMPROVE MATERNAL HEALTH. UN: If women are taken good care of from an early age, they will grow to bear bouncing happy children. You people should really look in to those measures from now on. LOCALS: We have not had any problems with the health of our womenfolk. You UN people are just exaggerating. You are simply over-paid. You are actually spoilt bunch of bugger. Our recent census returns show a growing and maturing population. Mind your own business.
6. COMBAT HIV/AIDS, MALARIA, AND OTHER DESEASES. UN: The scourge of HIV/AIDS is really getting out of hand. We need specialist interventions, and fast at that. In Europe, malaria was eradicated long ago. It does not reflect in the modern history of that part of the earth. Anyway, the rate of death even from other diseases is extremely low. LOCALS: HIV/AIDS is the white man's disease by which he intends to wipe the black man from face of the earth. The white manufactured HIV/AIDS. Our forefathers used to have many wives, and no died from that.  
7. ENSURE ENVIROMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY. UN: Humanity has got only this earth to inhabit. Now is the time to significantly take care of it. To stop this spectre of carbon emissions, or else. The environment is getting uglier every day. The nations of the world need to stand up against this pollution trend. Do not worry food security. There is enough food in the world for everyone. Just quit CO2 emissions, okay?  
8. DEVELOP A GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP FOR DEVELOPMENT. Meaningful partnerships in the international space are in demand, indeed. But almost all these partnerships have been forged to carry out some form of atrocities or other. Ordinary people have not been gives "airplay" about their own countries and the directions these are taking. And the UN stops and stares.  



"What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoast, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not the reliance against the resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle."

"Our reliance is in the love of liberty, which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is the preservation of the spirit, which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere." Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your down doors."

"Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you."

These patriotic words of American Republicanism were uttered by Abraham Lincoln, America's 16th president, at Edwardsville, on September 11, 1858. Pres. Lincoln, affectionately known as "Honest Abe", was America's commander-in-chief in her gloomiest hour of in the Civil War. He skillfully directed the Union effort of "proving that popular government is not an absurdity" until the vendetta between brother and brother, countryman against countryman played itself out; until patriotic sanity prevailed. 

When the Civil War was concluded, and some peace reinstated, his own life was sacrificed through a bullet of an assassin. He name was John Wilkes Booth.

Pres. Lincoln believed that the American Question--slavery--was a moral wrong against black Americans. On December 1, 1862, he said, in the State of the Union Address, about the Union effort that "in giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve".

He so endeared himself to his own people and countrymen of every region, creed, and religion that they dedicated a statue in his honor. Lincoln Memorial stands at the far end of the National Mall in Washington, DC.   

He came from the Republican Party--the GOP. The party that stood for progress for the American People. The party that argued patriotically, on the basis of the Declaration of Independence, in favor of the forward march in the American experiment in democracy. The Grand Old Party (GOP) once believed in freeing the human spirit.

Today the GOP is adopting a contrarian stance, for its own sake. For that reason, it is being blamed "for the first government shutdown in twenty years". This development comes after the Republican Representatives in the House of Representatives refused to allocate necessary appropriations to keep the federal government budgeted for. The standoff's sole aim is to side-track the health legislation introduced by Pres. Obama. The Americans call it the Affordable Care Act. It was actually upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012.

 

Ironically, the GOP is currently a house divided. The Republicans don't seem to see eye to eye within their formation. A Republican of California, Representative Devin Nunes expressed his own disgust this way: 

 

“You have this group that keeps saying somehow if you’re not with them, you’re for Obamacare. If you’re not with exactly their plan, exactly what they want to do, then you’re somehow for Obamacare, and it’s just getting a little old. It’s moronic to shut down the government over this." 

 Pres. Obama himself said in the White House briefing: "You don't get to extract a ransom for doing your job". He called the GOP's tactics "Republican brinkmanship'. And that is true. The Republicans came in to existence on the ticket of American upward mobility. And now this stale game of hide and seek? It's quite rich coming from them.  

 

Here's one comment from a seemingly frustrated American named Quinn of New Providence, New Jersey, addressed to House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio:

If the Affordable Care Act is "not ready for prime-time" as you say, then what have you done to fix it? Dozens of failed votes to repeal it don't count. Holding the U.S. government hostage as you try to defund it hardly seems like a way to make the Act "ready for prim-time".

    

THE PROBLEMS OF THE CONTINENT ARE MANY AND VARIOUS. BUT THEY ARE ALSO OF A HOMOGENEOUS CHARACTER. That is to say, they issue from the same source throughout: psychological inconsistency coupled to cultural inertia.

When Mohammed "Mo" Ibrahim founded the MO IBRAHIM FOUNDATION in 2006 because, as he likes to put it, "good governance is crucial", the ground could've shifted from under our feet. This would have been a reality both in spirit and in letter.

Recently, the smart scholar and revered businessman spoke at the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Tshwane. His whole theme was "social cohesion", and the lecturer explained that it "is really about really holding our society together".

It is about building a national identity that transcends ethnic[ity], religion, class and gender. It is more than just a passport or an ID, it is where we achieve common purpose as citizens and when we really feel that we have equitable access and participation in the political, economic, social and cultural life of our country.

The Sudanese-born mobile communications entrepreneur and billionaire, now a British citizen, came short of saying why Africa is still grappling with a unified identity. If accomplished, the it would be a humanitarian milestone--positive as a proton--never to be reversed.

That is what Mother Africa is in dire need of--a Unified Field Theory of Identity. She needs to imbue her children with a long-over-due sense of the United States of Africa. And this time to be willed in tangible words of African constitutionalism. This question can safely be called the "African sin of omission". If there ever was a thing "bright and beautiful", this is the one. 

Dr. Ibrahim has left Africa. He chose the UK to be his modern home and hearth. He needs to realize that pumping resources in to the continent of his birth and ancestors won't exorcize the demon of underdevelopment. The problem is looms larger than that.

When American Abolitionists created Liberia, a new day would have dawn. When Ethiopia rejected and defeated Europian colonialism, things could have turned for the better. When Ghana become the first African country to gain independence, the African specter of a Continental Congress would have taken in a vital breath of fresh air. And when South Africa emerged from the doldrums of Aparthied, the last one to do so; Namibia being the second last; the United States of Africa would've been a bewildering 360-degree turn. But that was never the case, as we all know.

It was actually another chance that went a-begging. In the last analysis, humanitarian aid on the continent of Africa will have to come in the form of the idea for Africa be to a US of Afric. The longer that idea is held out, the harder and uglier the solution will be. The "social cohesion" Dr. Ibrahim predicated his address on needs to be channeled in this direction. It's got to be the nucleus, not just gala talk by the moneyed, able to endear itself to individuals committed to "holding [the African] society together".

That attainment will, as Biko phrased it, give us and the world "a more human face".

Then the Ibrahim Prize could help galvanize the African society to invent new and sure ways as to how to go about, first, drawing the Articles of Federation, and second, the US of Africa's Constitution. 

Just incidentally, the Ibrahim Prize, to the tune of $5 million, a sump sum, and $200 000 for life awarded to a recipient, is estimated as the most generous ever received, trumping the $1,3 million awarded to the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace. And the Nobel is a once-off endorsement.               
   
There must be initiatives worthy of such incentives, surely. We only now need to engineer programs to attract to themselves philanthropic goodwill. Initiatives that could delineate their sole business as "to elevate the condition of [the African People]--to lift artificial weights from all African shoulders--to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all Africans--to afford all [Africans], an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life".